What is SMUstyle?
SMUstyle is Southern Methodist University’s official online fashion lifestyle and fashion magazine. On the blog, you’ll find fashion news stories, reviews and critiques, as well as fashion-associated stuff in and around campus.
What is your position for SMUstyle?
I write and photograph for SMUstyle. Our team is comprised of 13 people: girls and guys (well, one… but who’s counting?), freshmen to senior, and in all different sororities or not in one at all! We all contribute about as much as we’d like. Every Sunday, we brainstorm and plan stories for the week over brunch or dinner. For example, this week is Valentine’s Day so we have a ton of gift posts, date ideas, and a fun little post in store for the blog: “SMUstyle’s Most Eligible Bachelor.”
What does your position involve?
Writing for SMUstyle is an all-inclusive journalism position— you have to find your own story, research it well, write it yourself and then if you wish, go out and photograph whatever your subject is. Since not everyone is into photo, both Taylor Lewis (a fellow SMUstyle team member) and I both try to make ourselves available to shoot for other people. That’s always my favorite part— photographing anything from our bachelor for this week’s post to running over to Aftershock London in Preston Center and getting to shoot a closet’s worth of beautiful formal dresses. Photographing for SMUstyle is both a fashionista’s and a photographer’s dream— you never know what to expect on the job.
Do you have many connections among campus and community?
I’d definitely say so. I mention this later on, but SMUstyle is growing very quickly in and around Dallas. Since our editor-in-chief Schuyler Mack took over, she’s really worked to revamp the site and on a weekly basis, pushes us to deliver our best work. I think because the site puts out such quality work on such a weekly basis, we’ve in return gained the respect of our readers. Because of this, it’s not uncommon for me to receive a handful of texts a week from people wanting to join the team. Same goes for brands around campus and in Dallas— everyone wants to get involved. We’re so lucky with the feedback we get and SMUstyle wouldn’t be the magazine it is if we didn’t have collaborators willing to work with us.
Do you hold any events? What kind?
We try to keep our blog as interactive as possible. This year, I’d say our most successful event so far was our giveaway. We held a table out at the Flagpole where you could enter our raffle. Since SMUstyle is such a respectable and growing brand in and around Dallas, a lot of stores and designers are eager to get involved. For the raffle we had fitness classes, juice cleanses, discount packages and even a $500 gift card for Elements Boutique given to us for free from local stores near campus. This Valentine’s Day, we wanted to give back to our readers. We paired with Toko V, a modern and elegant sushi joint in Highland Park Village, to give away a four-course dinner date with wine pairings to the lucky winner! SMUstyle is all about the internet age and social media, so to enter, we asked our readers to upload an Instagram with their valentine (real, imaginary, almost-there-boyfriends and friend valentines welcome) and hashtag it #SMUstyleTokoVDay to enter. We did a similar thing with our “Best Halloween Costume” competition. It’s always fun seeing the readers get involved and go all out for these types of things.
How does one go about following/joining SMUstyle?
Joining SMUstyle is a little tough. Working with a team is sometimes difficult, and in our case we believe if we get to too big of a size, we won’t be able to deliver the best quality writing. The SMUstyle team works so close with each other, it’s hard when the team gets over around a dozen. However whenever anyone leaves (graduates or goes abroad) we put out a blast on the site for applications to fill the spot. If you’re too eager to wait, we have opened up SMU Lookbook to story submissions. If we feel that your work matches our vision and quality, you’ll see it on the blog soon enough (smulookbook.com/submit)!
Following SMUstyle is easy! We post daily to our official site: www.SMUstyle.com. Most likely, you can spot me in class on my MacBook checking up on my teammates posts throughout most of my boring classes (sorry professors!). As for Twitter and Instagram, on both, you can find us at @SMUstyle. Like our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/SMUStyle/ for easy updates to the blog.